Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

13/13 “’I ca’n’t stand this any longer!’ she cried, as she seized the tablecloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor. “‘And as for you,’ she went on, turning fiercely upon the Red Queen, whom she considered as the chief cause of all the mischief—but the Queen was no longer at her side—she had suddenly dwindled down to the size of a little doll… “‘As for you,’ she repeated, catching hold of the little creature in the very act of jumping over a bottle which had just lighted upon the table, ‘I’ll shake you into a kitten, that I will!’ “She took her off the table as she spoke, and shook her backwards and forwards with all her might. “The Red Queen made no resistance whatever: only her face grew very small, and her eyes got large and green: and still, as Alice went on shaking her, she kept on growing shorter—and fatter—and softer—and rounder—and—— “—and it really was a kitten, after all.” Alice carries her off like a scalp! We’ve reached the end of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), by Lewis Carroll, in the 1983 Pennyroyal edition with woodcut engravings by Barry Moser. Why does Alice single out the Red Queen when her coronation dinner is spoilt? Let’s back up. Readers often see Looking-Glass Land, like Wonderland, as a place where wacky things happen spontaneously. But, while there is definitely magic at work, cause and effect remain in effect. We learn how Alice has learned to see happenings in these strange realms before she passes through the mirror, when she tells Kitty, ”I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House... I can see all of it when I get upon a chair—all but the bit just behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too—but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire.” Alice has learned that, contra the real-world adage “where there’s smoke there’s fire”, in these topsy-turvy realms, that cannot be counted on, because all may be “only pretence”, staged to deceive you. So, when the dinner turns into a disaster in the most zany way, Alice knows it didn’t just happen, it was planned ahead. Who informed Alice of the dinner in the first place? She didn’t arrange it herself. The Red Queen, when Alice expressed interest in playing as a Queen in the chess game, told her ”You can be the White Queen’s Pawn, if you like, as Lily’s too young to play; and you’re in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to the Eighth Square you’ll be a Queen,“ and she is promised “in the Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and it’s all feasting and fun!” But Alice only learns the “feasting and fun” is to take the form of her dinner-party once she has crossed the board, been crowned, and is sandwiched between the Red and White Queens. “The Red Queen… [said] to the White Queen, ‘I invite you to Alice’s dinner-party this afternoon.’ “The White Queen smiled feebly, and said ‘And I invite you.’ “‘I didn’t know I was to have a party at all,’ said Alice; ‘but if there is to be one, I think I ought to invite the guests.’ “‘We gave you the opportunity of doing it,’ the Red Queen remarked: ‘but I daresay you've not had many lessons in manners yet?’” But for all Alice knew, the festivities could have been a banquet for everyone involved in the chess game (Alice isn’t aware of its overall progress; at the beginning of Chapter IX, she tried “asking if the game was over”), or simply a party got up for fun. The Red Queen, uses “we”, as if the White Queen shares responsibility—but given the White Queen’s credulity and near-imbecility, plus how, as we saw above, the Red Queen seems in charge of the chess game overall, recruiting players for White (see the second post in this series), she is the one behind the dinner-party. After the Red and White Queens fall to sleep in her lap (see the eighth post in this series) and vanish, Alice finds herself “standing before an arched doorway, over which were the words ‘QUEEN ALICE’ in large letters”. When the footman opens the door for her, she is greeted by a singer putting words into her mouth. “To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said ‘I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!’… “‘O Looking-Glass creatures,’ quoth Alice, ‘draw near! ‘Tis an honor to see me, a favour to hear: ‘Tis a trivilege high to have dinner and tea Alomg with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me!’” This presents the dinner-party as Alice’s idea, as if she had invited the Red and White Queens as guests of honor. Is it likely any of the guests would have known everything was the Red Queen’s doing, not Queen Alice’s? A chorus answers, with Alice’s responses, “Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can, And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran: Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea— And welcome Queen Alice with thirty-times-three! “Then followed a confused noise of cheering, and Alice thought to herself, ‘Thirty times three makes ninety. I wonder if any one’s counting?’… “Then fill up the glasses with treacle and ink, Or anything else that is pleasant to drink: Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine— And welcome Queen Alice with ninety-times-nine! “‘Ninety times nine!’ Alice repeated in despair. ‘Oh, that’ll never be done! I’d better go in at once—‘ and in she went, and there was a dead silence the moment she appeared.” I am torn whether the chorus knows what is about. Is clamming up the moment she walks in guilty conscience? Perhaps the plan was to make Alice wait out all 810 cheers, making an ordeal of the merrymaking ostensibly honoring her. Either none knew, or everyone knew what was in store for Alice—in both cases, they were put up to it. In any case, Alice is really a queen—cognate to womanhood—and that carries real power with it, else they would not have hushed. There is an interesting discrepancy: Alice heard “hundreds of voices” in the chorus, but on entering, “noticed there were about fifty guests of all kinds”. Had Alice merely misjudged the size of the chorus, that would hardly be worth noting. Have many or most of the voices vanished? Alice has ostensibly missed two courses, and is called on to carve a joint of mutton, at the Red Queen’s behest. “And the waiters set a leg of mutton before Alice, who looked at it rather anxiously, as she had never had to carve one before. “‘You look a little shy: let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,’ said the Red Queen. ‘Alice—Mutton: Mutton—Alice.’ The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and she returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused. “‘May I give you a slice?’ she said, taking up the knife and fork, and looking from one Queen to the other. “‘Certainly not,’ the Red Queen said, very decidedly: ‘it isn’t etiquette to cut any one you’ve been introduced to. Remove the joint!’ And the waiters carried it off”… This recalls the earlier incidents, from the Tweedles’ poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, and from Humpty Dumpty’s poem (where the speaker turned out to be himself, see the prior post in this series), where people eat or try to eat walking, talking animal products. But here the circumstances are different. The oysters were deceived by the Walrus and Carpenter, while the fish refused Humpty’s demand, presumably to eat them, but were saved when the White Queen refused Humpty entry. Here, a joint of mutton proudly presents itself at dinner at a party, and introduces itself to the hostess. Alice is expected to carve the meat, but is then told not to “cut”, either literally or in the etiquette sense of not acknowledging someone. No doubt, many are content to read this as an early show of vegetarian sentimentality, but: either the joint would have been harmed by being cut up, in which case it would draw back in horror; or, being sentient à la Douglas Adams, cutting up and eating would not harm it, in which case its behavior makes sense, but the Red Queen’s doesn’t, as she should have let Alice go ahead. The exchange only makes sense if read as a trap for Alice, Red Queen and joint conspiring together. Confirming it wasn’t about meat-eating, the waiters then “brought a large plum-pudding in its place. “‘I wo’n’t be introduced to the pudding, please,’ Alice said rather hastily, ‘or we shall get no dinner at all. May I give you some?’ “But the Red Queen looked sulky, and growled ‘Pudding—Alice: Alice—Pudding. Remove the pudding!’, and the waiters took it away before Alice could return its bow.’” Alice has seen through this ploy, and the chagrined Red Queen sloppily hastens the plan, having the pudding recalled at once. But the Red Queen runs into another problem. Alice can play the game, too. “However, she didn’t see why the Red Queen should be the only one to give orders; so, as an experiment, she called out ‘Waiter! Bring back the pudding!’, and there it was again in a moment, like a conjuring trick. It was so large that she couldn’t help feeling a little shy with it, as she had been with the mutton: however, she conquered her shyness by a great effort, and handed a slice to the Red Queen. “‘What impertinence!’ said the Pudding. ‘I wonder how you’d like it, if I were to cut a slice out of you, you creature!’ “Alice could only look at it and gasp.” Alice is guilted by false equivalence. Serving a pudding is like cutting a human! Of course, if the anthropomorphic Pudding really were really pained by it, an inanimate one should be served! Going vegan won’t save you, when you’re being guilted for existing, for doing what you must to survive. Asked to speak after this snub, Alice again reduces the room to silence, and reveals she understood the talking foodstuffs related to the predation narratives earlier. “‘Do you know, I’ve had such a quantity of poetry repeated to me to-day,’ Alice began, a little frightened at finding that, the moment she opened her lips, there was dead silence, and all eyes were fixed upon her; ‘and it’s a very curious thing, I think—every poem was about fishes in some way. Do you know why they’re so fond of fishes, all about here?’” The Red Queen, “whose answer was a little wide of the mark”, deflects from answering, calling on the White Queen to recite a riddle: to which the answer is, oysters! But Alice doesn’t have time to solve it. The Red Queen proposes a toast to Queen Alice’, and bids her give a speech. The Red and White Queens “support” her by pressing her on either side, until she is pushed upwards. “(‘And they did push so!’ she said afterwards, when she was telling her sister the history of the feast. ‘You would have thought they wanted to squeeze me flat!’) “In fact it was rather difficult for her to keep in her place while she made her speech: the two Queens pushed her so, one on each side, that they nearly lifted her up into the air.” ”The claws that catch” of the Jabberwock, methinks. Alice doesn’t get past “I rise to return thanks—“, when the White Queen—either warning Alice because in on the plot, or usinb her memory that “works both ways”, warns her, “‘Take care of yourself!… Something’s going to happen!’ “And then (as Alice afterwards described it) all sorts of things happened in a moment. The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top… “At this moment she heard a hoarse laugh at her side, and turned to see what was the matter with the White Queen; but, instead of the Queen, there was the leg of mutton sitting in the chair. ‘Here I am!’ cried a voice from the soup-tureen, and Alice turned again, just in time to see the Queen’s broad good-natured face grinning at her for a moment over the edge of the tureen, before she disappeared into the soup.” The food is mock-eating the guests! How like controlled opposition socialists who guilt all the wealthy as oppressors with a broad brush, with “eat the rich” rhetoric so transparently absurd, all resentment of injustice is spent pursuing the untenable goals and peters out, as intended. I can imagine the Red Queen saying, “You, Alice, are an oppressor like us, and so, this revolution is all your fault!” Alice rejects this guilting reversal of values. “There was not a moment to be lost. Already several of the guests were lying down in the dishes, and the soup-ladle was walking up the table towards Alice’s chair, and beckoning to her impatiently to get out of its way.” This is one prole Queen Alice makes get out of her way! She cries, “I ca’n’t stand this any longer!” and “she seized the tablecloth with both hands: one good pull, and plates, dishes, guests, and candles came crashing down together in a heap on the floor.” She takes the shrinking Red Queen in hand, shaking her… until her dream ends, and she is holding Kitty! Hence why the prey took the form of fish—yet recall the hero on slaying the Jabberwock: “with its head he went galumphing back.” Alice slays the Jabberwock! Hers is not so clean-cut a challenge as a boy becoming a man would face—social settings are a woman’s battlefield—but she reaches a point where manners can get her no farther. The entire dinnner is a farce to shame her, and make her seem guilty of the unfeeling exploitation she rejected before. The lesson? Sometimes a Will Smith slap is called for. Alas, Notes author James R. Kincaid gives one last confirmation he’s understood nothing. When Alice is back home she says, “By the way, Kitty, if only you’d been really with me in my dream, there was one thing you would have enjoyed—I had such a quantity of poetry said to me, all about fishes! To-morrow morning you shall have a real treat. All the time you’re eating your breakfast, I’ll repeat ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ to you; and then you can make believe it’s oysters, dear!” Kincaid: “Alice unconsciously adopts the attitude of those ‘unpleasant characters,’ the voracious Walrus and Carpenter. Selwyn Goodacre points out that the phrase ‘oysters, dear’ recalls, in a neat ironic twist, the grisly climax of Tweedledee’s poem: ‘Now, if you’re ready, Oysters dear,/ We can begin to feed.’” Alice memorizes “The Walrus and the Carpenter” on a one hearing, “Jabberwocky” on one reading, and catches Looking-Glass Land’s fish-prey theme… and we’re to believe she adopts the villains’ attitude unconsciously? Likelier, she‘s kidding! The Alice books are poetic-didactic masterworks, worthy to be read by and form the children and adults of every generation. #LewisCarroll #BarryMoser #ThroughTheLookingGlass #AliceInWonderland #PennyroyalPress #Pennyroyal #woodcutting #woodcut #engraving #illustration #art #dreams #fantasy #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books